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YilmazGuney wrote: I agree, I read the book last year. It's one of the worst books I have ever read...Dan Brown writes like a 5-year-old kid, I don't understand why it's such a big seller...

Dude, I've got five words for you: The Bridges Of Madison Country. One of the best-selling books of the 90's. Who else was topping the lists? John Grisham. Michael Crichton. Absolute shit. Just look at box office receipts and popular music sales, it's not a unique situation: you rarely find any masterpieces among the top moneymakers.

That's why I follow Oprah's Book club.

The Invunche wrote:That's why I follow Oprah's Book club.

More irony/sarcasm?????!!!!!!????? ](*,) ](*,) ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

Do you have to ask?

The Invunche wrote:Do you have to ask?

A lot of people on this forum are unsure, so we should clearly label these things now.


(That was sarcasm.)

Of all the people mentioned, I really despise Crichton most of all. Anyone with anything more than a nodding familiarity, and maybe less, with the Science Fiction genre, can usually hear a synopsis of one of his multipage turds and immediately point you to several stories or novels by real writers who have tackled the same themes with more skill and inspiration already.

Chrichton is beneath pond scum. In addition to writing and directing the worst movie ever made (Looker ) he has a second career as a stone cold racist (Rising Sun ) and eco-liar. He claims that Global warming is a myth and has the ear of President Low Normal on the subject.

Luckily for the rest of us Al Gore is armed with the Truth.

Speaking of Eco, semiotics, cabals, the arcane, et cetera:

Foucault's Pendulum by Kubrick
Eco revealed in 2005 that after the film adaptation of The Name of the Rose, he no longer wished his novels to be made into films. However, he later heard that Stanley Kubrick had expressed interest in filming Foucault's Pendulum shortly before his death, and wished, along with his readers, that Kubrick had tackled the project. Truly a magnificent might-have-been of literary and film history!

Indeed!

David Ehrenstein wrote:Chrichton is beneath pond scum. In addition to writing and directing the worst movie ever made (Looker ) he has a second career as a stone cold racist (Rising Sun ) and eco-liar. He claims that Global warming is a myth and has the ear of President Low Normal on the subject.

Amen to that. Didn't that arrogant prick practice medicine? If you were in an accident and they were the only two around, who would you rather have treating you, him of Bill Frist?

In that case I'd take the gas pipe.

Or get vintage era Gas Pipe Casso to finish him off once & for all.

Foucault's Pendulum by uncle Stan? By-golly that would would have been neat!

Uh, oh, man, I have read lots of books on Jesus, but my favourite is the long out-of-print and practically unattainable, Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature & Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East (phew!) by the late, John Marco Allegro. What is it about? Brace yourselves: Jesus was a magic mushroom. A magic fucking mushroom. The proto-Christians were shamen. The 'body of Christ' was not represented by bread, but by the fleshy fungi. The whole messianic carpenter thing was a smokescreen to keep the cover on a fertility cult, phallic worship, bacchanalian orgies and so on and so forth. Crazy, huh? Nonsense, eh? Well, it would be, if the author had not been one of the most knowledgable Biblical scholars of all time. He understood almost every major ancient language - Sumerian, Cuneiform, Egyptian, Hebrew, etc. More importantly, he was one of the scholars who worked on translating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 50s. He had the access, he had the experience, he had the skill, he had the knowledge. When the book was published in 1970, it was slammed, he was ridiculed. I mean, how the fuck does one - anyone - deal with something like that? It's outrageous. The Dead Sea Scrolls took about 40 years to appear to the public and much of the content hasn't been published. There's more to what went on the Middle East in those times than any of the sacred texts say. All kinds of stuff is buried out in the deserts and in the Vatican libraries.

But then the question is: What is it that the mushroom (the psylocybin) reveals? Why does this chemical have that effect on the human mind? It talks to you, as God would. It imparts archaic knowledge that is of unknown origin. Then there's dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Found in many grasses, ie. Reed Canary Grass (Phalaris Arundinicea aka. Dwarf's Garters) which grows practically everywhere - you probably have some in your back yard - and when you smoke the leaves, well... you'll be appalled by what you see. It's apparently not like a hallucination, it's real, whatever 'real' means in any context. Oh, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is produced in the human brain, by the pineal gland. DMT is banned in the USA, Europe, etc. I have never heard of anyone taking more than twice.

More info HERE.

Life is a Big Fucking Mystery. Jesus is only a small part of it - "a piece of Western furniture" as Terence McKenna refered to him/it. Plants seem to be the key to the Doors of Perception. TV certainly isn't. Dare I say it... neither are movies.

If I've mentioned this before, ignore me, but there is a Nebula Award winning story by Michael Bishop entitled The Quickening. It's details aren't important (if you like thoughtful, literate SF, have a look at it), but it's set in the near future and there is a throwaway line about people watching Kubrick's version of The Left Hand of Darkness.

Anyone who has read that novel can only try to control their breathing imagining the skills, the sheer brilliance, that Stan would have brought to that grand canvas

And, yes...Michal Crichton is a total colostomy bag. Glad everyone seems to know that.

I suppose it was inevitable...

Riding a global wave of publicity and controversy, The Da Vinci Code this weekend became the biggest international day-and-date opener ever, with an estimated gross of $147m from 12,213 screens in 90 territories.

Added to the film's estimated North American gross of $77m, the international take gives Sony's Holy Grail-themed adventure a worldwide first-weekend total of $224m, the second biggest ever, behind only the $253.9 achieved this time last year by Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

In the international marketplace, Da Vinci's ultra-wide release and high profile Cannes Film Festival launch clearly helped it to beat the $144.8m from 10,000 screens in 104 territories recorded by the Star Wars finale. The Sony film, though, achieved its total without the help of early openings (most territories opened the film on their usual launch days) or previews.

from Screen International

I saw it over the weekend. In preparation, I forced myself to sit down and read the book the week before seeing the film (in fear that the movie would spoil the book for me). I enjoyed reading the book, I was restless and bored during the movie. It just didn't click right. Opie dropped the ball. Maybe it just doesn't translate well to film. Would have made a better TV mini-series, probably.

I saw this on the weekend, too. Went with the wife and in-laws. It was actually the first pleasant movie-going experience I've had since I've been here, as no one talked (except for some lady a bit from me who gave away a key plot point, though I thought it was pretty obvious anyways, so thankfully nothing was actually ruined.)

At any rate, though, I think all I can say is "meh" I thought it went by at a good beat. It was 150 minutes but I can't say it really felt it. But it was lacking a spark. The movie is utterly preposterous in many ways (and I'm not talking about the general conspiracy, but more in the events that take place, the worst offender being the opening murder, where the guy, after being shot, manages to set up such an elaborate set of clues) and yet it never really took off.

McKellen gave the film some life, though.

I don't know what I was expecting but I guess I was expecting something more. Considering the phenomenon the book is I guess I was still expecting some big spectacle and all I really got was a run-of-the-mill adventure/chase flick. At least Audrey Tautou was beyond cute.

Spoiler

Since her character's supposed to be the last descendant of Jesus Christ, is it a sin to want to tap that?